<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>What the Mirror Cannot Show by kaeorin</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25641208">What the Mirror Cannot Show</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin'>kaeorin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [128]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Image, Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff, Love, Reader-Insert, Self-Esteem Issues</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:35:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25641208</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not easy, trying not to compare your body to Loki’s. But when the weight of that falls in on you, he’s right there to hold you. (Adult situations hinted at BUT NOT depicted.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki (Marvel)/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [128]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>178</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What the Mirror Cannot Show</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Okay, so as a plus-sized writer, I do want to say that, in my head, most of my characters (including a significant portion of my Loki’s Lullaby Reader characters) are plump/curvy/round/bigger/fat. A while ago, someone asked for a lullaby with a reader that was explicitly fat and it’s taken me this long to write one. Unfortunately, I may have gone for the too-obvious plot line here, in having the reader have days where her self-esteem wobbles a bit. I guess it’s never occurred to me to come up with other plot lines specifically for clearly-fat readers. If you’re a plus-sized reader and there are other things you’d like to read about the reader doing, please let me know. I know that representation isn’t really representation if the author has to say it outside of the works but I promise that I only avoid focusing on the reader-character’s body because….bodies are different! I don’t focus on their hair or eye color, or their name either! I dunno. In any case, regardless of what size you are, I hope it helps to have Loki hold you and say kind—and true—words to you tonight.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Generally, you didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. You’d been...well, fat all your life, and it was just how it was. There was no need to dwell on it all the time. You took care of yourself. You ate as healthily as you could, you did your best to make sure you got some physical activity in every day, you certainly didn’t overdo it on soda or alcohol. It was just that something in your genes, or in your reluctance to spend hours each day punishing yourself in a gym, that made it so you’d always carried more weight than the world liked to see on girls. It wasn’t great for your self-esteem growing up, but now that you were out of school and in the so-called adult world, you were usually pretty good at, bare minimum, accepting your body as it was and reminding yourself of all the things that it was capable of doing. On a day-to-day basis, you didn’t outright hate yourself for how you looked, and that was huge progress compared to your younger self. You were fine.</p><p>Having Loki around to compare yourself to did, admittedly, make it hard to love your body some days. He certainly didn’t do it on purpose! Even on your absolute worst days, where you felt weird and disgusting and like no one in the world should ever have to look upon you, his eyes only ever held open adoration. But, lord, his body was perfect. Even if you didn’t know his origins and you merely passed him on the street, you would certainly have thought he was something like a god. He was tall and thin and sleek and strong. His muscles didn’t quite <i>bulge</i> beneath his clothing the way that Thor’s did, but they certainly called out to be touched. Clothing sat against his body like it knew who wore it, like it knew that it was protecting Loki’s perfect skin from prying, hungry eyes. Long before he took any notice of you, he’d come to represent masculine beauty in your mind, and the first time he’d held your face in his hands, you’d expected your heart to beat right out of your chest.</p><p>Sometimes, in the past, you’d dated people smaller than you. It generally wasn’t something you sought out, but being larger than someone you really liked wasn’t enough to make you stay away. But still. It was <i>Loki</i>. For a long time, you hadn’t even thought about looking at him with anything other than quiet admiration. Sometimes you’d cross paths when you went to work in the Tower, but men like him never really looked at girls like you, and so it’d just been a foregone conclusion that there was no point in even fantasizing about him. So you admired him from afar and sent out waves of gratitude into the universe for the simple fact of his existence. </p><p>Perhaps because of that aforementioned conclusion, it took you an embarrassingly-long time to pick up on it when he started looking at you differently. After a while, he found out where you worked, and he started visiting more often, dropping by to hover near the cluster of desks where you were stationed. It thrilled you, of course, but...privately. You just assumed that he was interested in one of your smaller, lovelier coworkers, and did your best to focus on your work. One night, you were there late. Loki had appeared out of nowhere and perched on the edge of your desk beside you and the first thing you ever officially said to him was “Sorry, she left hours ago.”</p><p>He had tilted his perfect head curiously at you. “Who did?”</p><p>You’d looked up, then, and cast a quick glance around the room. You were pretty sure that there were a few higher-ups tucked away in one of their private offices somewhere, but you were the only person left here in the room. <i>Everyone</i> left hours ago. “Whoever you’re here to see. I could take a message for you, if you’d like?” You didn’t <i>love</i> the idea of being the go-between for Loki and whichever lucky girl had caught his eye, but you knew enough about how the world worked so that you didn’t feel even the slightest twinge of jealousy.</p><p>When you looked at him, his eyes were narrowed, like he was trying to figure you out. Maybe a thrill ran through you, then, and you were quick to look back down at your computer. People didn’t really look at you like that. What they saw was pretty much what they got. Fat girl: unassuming, hardworking, kind enough but usually overlooked. That was your role to play, and it was fine. But you still found that you liked the curiosity in his eyes, like he thought there was something more to you. Of course <i>you</i> knew there was, but most people generally didn’t get that far.</p><p>“I’m here to see you.”</p><p>It had taken several more painfully embarrassing moments for you to realize he was there on personal business. At first, you rambled at him about what you were working on, thinking that maybe Tony Stark had sent him to your office for some kind of update. In those moments, it was easier for you to assume that Tony Stark would send Loki, of all people, to talk to you, of all people, about what your whole office was working on. Loki, the darling man, had listened to you with growing confusion until your brain finally recognized the absurdity of everything and made you trail off.</p><p>He asked you to take a walk with him. The two of you wound up strolling through the streets of New York City as the sun went down. Neither of you said much at first, but when you worked up the courage to ask him questions—nothing too personal, of course—he surprised you with more than single-word answers. And then he started asking you questions. That first night on the town turned into a routine of sorts and, in time, he started showing up at the end of normal working hours to walk with you, even if he’d already come to visit earlier that day. </p><p>Talking to him made you come to re-evaluate a lot of the things that you’d more or less taken for granted about the world. He had a way of asking questions which seemed so simple and innocent on the surface, but when you tried to answer them, you discovered that he’d hit upon some fundamental inconsistency in the way the human world worked. At the end of your conversations, you always felt sort of wrecked: smarter and more clueless at the same time. That made it easier to forgive yourself for how utterly shocked you were when, one night, standing at the door to your apartment building, Loki leaned in to kiss you. </p><p>And now he was locked down with you inside your very own apartment. You had very good reason to suspect that having him here was literally keeping you sane, even on the mornings when you woke up feeling...well, not particularly good about yourself. He held you close at night. Most mornings you woke up comfortable, secure, nestled there against him as he breathed warm breath against the back of your neck. Sometimes, though, you could only focus on the way his hand rested on your belly. On those mornings, you tortured yourself by comparing his hand and the graceful curve of his wrist to your too-ample stomach, striped with stretch marks. When he woke up and rubbed his nose gently against your shoulder, it always made you all-too-aware of the extra padding you carried there—and everywhere else. </p><p>On those mornings, you dreaded having him join you in the shower. It just seemed like too much: standing under the spray, totally naked, you couldn’t help but compare your body to his.  He had never given you any reason to believe that he looked at you as critically as you looked at yourself, but, when the water cascaded down his lithe body and he reached out to smooth soap along your skin, every single one of your flaws seemed to burn brightly and unmistakably. </p><p>For the first time in a <i>long</i> time, you wished you were smaller. He would look so good paired with some tiny little slip of a girl: collarbones and giant doe eyes and long flowing hair. And here he was with...you. With <i>all</i> of you. On those bad self-esteem days, it was hard for you to make yourself eat. The nasty voice in the back of your head, the one you’d fought against for years before finally becoming comfortable with yourself, it told you that you didn’t need to eat anything. With all the energy that your body stored, you didn’t need to eat for <i>weeks</i>. Maybe <i>months</i>.</p><p>Not that Loki would ever allow something like that. You saw him watch you carefully when you nibbled on some tiny breakfast, when you worked through lunch. On those bad days, regardless of whose turn it actually was, he always took it upon himself to make dinner, and he always reminded you, disapproval coloring his voice, that you’d hardly eaten anything all day so you’d better finish that plate. Sometimes, you wanted to push it away and ask him why he cared. You wanted to tell him that, if you didn’t eat, you might eventually get smaller, and wouldn’t he be happier if you were more presentable? But you always held your tongue. Maybe you were afraid of being the one to make him realize how you looked. Maybe you didn’t want to make him feel like he had to assure you that he actually loved how you looked.</p><p>So you did what you could to keep him from figuring you out. As much as you might have wanted to retreat into yourself and into your self-loathing, you forced yourself to do more for him than usual. You thanked him profusely for dinner. You didn’t let him help with the dishes. As much as you might have preferred to wedge yourself into the other corner of the couch, you leaned into him like normal and let him put his arm around you. Maybe the endorphins from touching him made you feel a little better.  In this state, on these days, you definitely didn’t have the courage to initiate anything particularly intimate, but if he did, you absolutely devoted yourself to making him feel good.  It was the least you could do, after all.</p><p>One night, as you lie there together with your heartbeats racing and sweat cooling on your skin, he tightened his arms around you.</p><p>“You are <i>perfect</i>,” he breathed into the night. His voice was filled with a kind of heaviness that told you that this did not merely come from his last orgasm. “Do you know that? It’s like your entire being was crafted with the express purpose of driving me mad. I’ve said that to you before, right?”</p><p>It’d been a bad day for you, but something in his words began to cut through the nastiness in your mind. You couldn’t bring yourself to crack a joke-that-actually-wasn’t-a-joke about how it’d actually be so easy to imagine someone just like you, only smaller. </p><p>As though he’d read your mind, he sat up a little and lifted your chin to make you meet his eyes. His face was...almost stern. “I cannot force you to share whatever it is that plagues you like this and makes you avoid looking at yourself in the mirror. But know that you are perfect. Know that even when I sleep with you in my arms, I often dream about being awake and touching you because my mind cannot bear to be parted from you for so long. Know that, even now, the very sight of you ignites within me a hunger that I fear may never be sated. Know that, for the first time in the <i>entirety</i> of my life, you have made thinking about the future bearable because I know that you will be there with me. And know that I love you. Alright?”</p><p>The lump in your throat made it hard to speak, but he seemed to accept the shaky nod that you offered. He smoothed his thumbs along your cheekbones and leaned in to kiss you. He parted your lips easily with his tongue and claimed you with a hunger that persisted even through all that you’d already done together. You clung to him and you did not cringe away even when he moved his hand lower, along your belly, along your side, and sought to make you gasp out his name into the night once more.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>